digital transformation

Maxwell’s Demon: Planning for Technology Obsolescence in Acquisition Strategy

Imagine a chamber divided into two parts by a removable partition. On one side is a hot sample of gas and on the other side a cold sample of the same gas. The chamber is a closed system with a certain amount of order, because the statistically faster moving molecules of the hot gas on one side of the partition are segregated from statistically slower moving molecules of the cold gas on the other side. Maxwell’s demon guards a trap door in the partition, which is still assumed not to conduct heat. It spots molecules coming from either side and judges their speeds…The perverse demon manipulates the trap door so as to allow passage only to the very slowest molecules of the hot gas and the very fastest molecules of the cold gas. Thus the cold gas receives extremely slow molecules, cooling it further, and the hot gas receives extremely fast molecules, making it even hotter. In apparent defiance of the second law of thermodynamics, the demon has caused heat to flow from the cold gas to the hot one. What is going on?

Because the law applies only to a closed system, we must include the demon in our calculations. Its increase of entropy must be at least as great as the decrease of entropy in the gas-filled halves of the chamber. What is it like for the demon to increase its entropy? –Murray Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex, W. H. Freeman and Company, New York, 1994, pp. 222-223

“Entropy is a figure of speech, then,” sighed Nefastis, “a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow. The Machine uses both. The Demon makes the metaphor not only verbally graceful, but also objectively true.” –Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1965

Technology Acquisition: The Basics

I’ve recently been involved in discussions regarding software development and acquisition that cut across several disciplines that should be of interest to anyone engaged in project management in general, but IT project management and acquisition in particular.

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The Medium Controls the Present: Is it Too Late to Stop a Digital Dark Age?

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” ― George Orwell, 1984

A few short pre-Covid years ago, Google Vice President Vint Cerf turned some heads at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Jose, warning the attending scientists that the digitization of the artifacts of civilization may create a digital dark age. “If we’re thinking 1,000 years, 3,000 years ahead in the future, we have to ask ourselves, how do we preserve all the bits that we need in order to correctly interpret the digital objects we create?” Cerf’s concerns are that today’s technology will become obsolete at some future time, with the information of our own times locked in a technological prison.

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Big Data and the Repository of Babel

In 1941, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) published a short story entitled “The Library of Babel.” In the story Borges imagines a universe, known as the Library, which is described by the story’s narrator as made up of adjacent hexagonal rooms.

Each of the rooms of the library is poorly lit, with one side acting as the entrance and exit, and four of the five remaining walls of the rooms containing bookshelves whose books are placed in a completely uniform style, though the books’ contents are completely random.

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The Need for an Integrated Digital Environment (IDE) Strategy in Project Management*

Putting the Pieces Together

To be an effective project manager, one must possess a number of skills in order to successfully guide the project to completion. This includes having a working knowledge of the information coming from multiple sources and the ability to make sense of that information in a cohesive manner. This is so that, when brought together, it provides an accurate picture of where the project has been, where it is in its present state, and what actions must be taken to keep it (or bring it back) on track.

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